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Your IMPACT Solutions Employee Assistance & Work/Life Program is available to you, your household members, dependents, parents, and parents-in-law 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Qualified mental health professionals are always ready to help you with everyday life issues like stress, problems with teens, conflicts with co-workers, marital strife and so much more.

To connect with services call:

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IMPACT on Wellness Newsletter

In this issue:

Opioid Addiction

Anxiety

Perfectionism

Toxic Relationships

Couples Counseling

Did You Know: Stress Less Center

Webinar: Resilient Parenting

April 2018

Helping Someone Addicted to Opioids ... or Other Drugs

An opiate addiction health emergency exists nationwide. Here’s how to help someone addicted to these, or other substances of abuse: 1. Accept that enabling is initially part of any close relationship with an addict. 2. Learn how enabling helps addicts avoid seeking help or

admitting they need it. 3. Stopping enabling is a learned skill with a shift in mindset. Discover how 12-

step groups like Al-Anon help members make the switch. 4. Encourage the opiate addict to get treatment. Coordinate your attempts with a

proper treatment program. Your EAP can help you find one. (Note that motivation to accept help will at first be low.)

5. Expect crises, drug incidents, and legal problems to continue or increase because addiction is a chronic illness. The good news is that each event is a “go-opportunity” to offer help. Make it easy to accept and with simple steps for doing so.

6. Make treatment non-negotiable in your relationship—anything less requires enabling.

7. Repeat #5 until help is accepted.

Getting Help for Anxiety More than 40 million North Americans suffer from chronic forms of nervousness that interfere with their life. These are anxiety disorders, which are highly treatable forms of mental illness that can benefit from counseling, support, medication, or alternative therapies. If anxiety is interfering with your life or bothersome in ways that interfere with your relationships, your job, and your happiness, don’t be a prisoner to the disabling condition. Anxiety can’t be seen like a rash or a mole, but it is just as real, and it’s not your fault. Failing to understand anxiety can lead you to suffer longer as you struggle to control its symptoms. This can contribute to additional stress and health problems like depression. Reach out and get proper help from mental health professionals through an insurance referral from your doctor or help from an employee assistance program.

Information in IMPACT on Wellness is for general information purposes only and is not intended to replace the counsel or advice of a qualified health professional.

You can contact IMPACT Solutions for professional counseling and guidance 24 hours a day at 800-227-6007.

IMPACT on Wellness is copyright protected by DFA Publishing LLC, 2018.

Perfectionism: A Chronic Health Issue

New research from a sampling of over 40,000 college students in the UK, Canada, and the USA shows young people are agitated and struggling with perfectionism. Each participated in a survey called a Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale. Perfectionism is having excessively high personal standards and being overly critical of oneself. Health consequences from perfectionism can include anxiety, depression, eating disorders, suicidal thinking, and physical illnesses. Young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, but they are also more demanding of others and themselves. See the research, and if you are a parent or concerned person, consider advocating to help young people balance success with acceptance.  

Detachment: The Decision to Let Go

Are you facing the loss of a close relationship, deciding it’s now time to let go and end the pain and conflict associated with it? You may want to consider

counseling support for this journey. The challenge of ending an unhealthy or toxic relationship often includes a cycle of holding on, letting go, retrieval, and the hope of one last try, followed by an even bigger letdown. You may face grief-like reactions such as denial, anger, and depression before acceptance. Counseling can help you weather this storm, help keep you grounded, and challenge you to find the healthier path you really want.

Source: http://www.apa.org (search “perfectionism”)

Time for Couples Counseling? Many people think about couples counseling, but don’t go. Some may threaten each other with it: “That does it, we’re going!” But how do you know if you should see a couples therapist? Will it help resolve the problems you face? Could it make things worse? One reason couples don’t go for counseling is a belief that it means they’ve failed in their relationship. (Not true!) Sur-veys by professional associations vary, but most show about twice as many couples reporting im-provement in their relationship versus those who report that relationship issues did not improve or got worse. There are many reasons for counseling, but a nearly universal outcome is acquiring new “communication tools” – ways of speaking and lis-tening to each other that increase relationship satis-faction. Many couples move from feeling desperate to a new level of excitement about their future be-cause of this one achievement in improved commu-nication. You can explore the question of whether couples counseling might be a good path for your relationship by visiting with a qualified professional and exploring in a session the issues unique to your relationship. The chances are excellent that you will know the next step to take at the end of that session. Couples therapy, like individual ther-apy, is a journey. You will work harder than the therapist who will guide you to your goal. But the odds are in your favor that it will be worth the trip.

TOLL-FREE: 800-227-6007 WEBSITE: www.MyImpactSolution.com

RESOURCES:

Resiliency Skills Training

Series consisting of 14 brief

training modules designed to

improve your resiliency and

build up your resistance to

stress

Relaxation Tools including

guided imagery, progressive

muscle relaxation and more

Assessment Tools including

depression, anxiety and

mental health risk

assessments

IMPACT SOLUTIONS EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE & WORK/LIFE PROGRAM

Stress Less Center

Did you know… IMPACT Solutions offers a Stress Less Center on your EAP website

where you can find new tools and strategies for managing stress in one convenient location? Searching for stress free living? That is a myth. However, we are offering you a chance to understand your personal relationship with stress and increase your control over unexpected stressful events. Doing so will improve your overall life at home with family and friends, at work with coworkers and customers and with people in your community that you deal with on a daily basis. In addition to the numerous resources on the website, you can call IMPACT Solutions 24/7 at 800-227-6007. A mental health professional is available at all times to provide you with confidential in the moment support and guidance to address your immediate need. Counseling referrals and other EAP services are coordinated by our triage counselors during normal business hours, Monday through Friday.

Visit our Stress Less Center on the IMPACT Website at www.MyImpactSolution.com Remember to enter your organization’s Member Login.

Forgot your Member Login? Give us a call at 800-227-6007

Resilient Parenting

Building resilience — the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity or trauma — can help children manage stress and feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. However, being resilient does not mean that children won't experience difficulty or distress, but it does mean they can more easily recover from adversity while retaining a positive self-image and view of the world.

Monthly Webinar Series

The Thriving Family: A parent's guide to raising resilient kids As parents, we all want the best for our children. With the best of intentions, we devote our lives to creating a family foundation that nurtures and protects them. But along the way, as we witness our children experiencing the inevitable challenges of life, our own expectations and vulnerabilities can interfere with their developing brain. How do we avoid this? How can we feel confident that our beliefs and behaviors are providing the best foundation for our children to overcome the difficulties of life so they can truly flourish and succeed? Join us in this webinar as we explore the complexities of our role as parents, our relationship with our individual children, and the evidence-based approaches to foster resilience.

Watch this Webinar any time throughout the month of April when you log in to IMPACT on the Web at www.MyImpactSolution.com. Forgot your login information? Give us a call at 800-227-6007.

Points to Ponder

Words and actions have great impact on the confidence of children and adolescents. They often remember the positive statements parents and caregivers say to them. Phrases such as "I like the way you…" or "You are improving at…" or "I appreciate the way you…" should be used on a daily basis. Parents also can smile, nod, wink, pat on the back, or hug a child to show attention and appreciation. What else can parents do?

Be generous with praise Teach positive self-statements Avoid criticism that takes the form of ridicule or shame Teach children about decision making and to recognize when they have made good decisions Show children that you can laugh at yourself

To learn more, log in now at www.MyImpactSolution.com Forgot your login information? Give us a call at 800-227-6007